August 2018 and beyond Standard Course Times

[mstomel]

My guess would be that both barrelers and tunnelers are rather short and flow more. There aren't an abundance of times that dogs have to really collect in tunnelers and while collection is needed to do barrels it's pretty clear to the dog what is needed for it, like it is with barrel racing. Hoopers is 100% path, but it's more like jumpers in response to length, collection, lead changes, etc. 

[Edraith]

Pondering question, why is it dogs are faster in Barrellers than Hoopers, is it the variety of Obstacles in Barrelers over Hoopers that allow dogs to run faster? 

I guess same could be said of Tunnelers, why is that the fastest Class and only 1 obstacle like Hoopers?

Is it Course Designs allow for more speed in Tunnellers and Barrellers.

I know most dogs love Tunnellers and can zip in that Class. Do the Tunnels in Barrellers make that faster too?

I'd love to know the answer to that too, but who can know what dogs think? I just know what I have observed, that all dogs I have had ran more slowly in courses with all jumps or hoops. Although one does like intro jumpers, maybe because it isn't much more than out and back, no choices or thinking? At least times are calculated differently for each type of class. That's a good thing.

Maybe it looks like just as much of a sea of sticks to the dogs as it does to us xD they are confusing to look at...

[Billie Rosen]

Chris, maybe I'm missing something, but if you only based this on the dogs that Q, then dogs that don't Q because they are over time aren't represented?  That seems to me to be an important piece of the calculation.

[Scott Casino]

Chris, maybe I'm missing something, but if you only based this on the dogs that Q, then dogs that don't Q because they are over time aren't represented?  That seems to me to be an important piece of the calculation.

If memory serves, data for NQs is not collected. The Q Report submitted by clubs to NADAC only includes the course time and yardage for qualifying runs. Collecting it for non-qualifiers would require some modifications to trial secretary software platforms

[mephalon]

Chris, maybe I'm missing something, but if you only based this on the dogs that Q, then dogs that don't Q because they are over time aren't represented?  That seems to me to be an important piece of the calculation.

If memory serves, data for NQs is not collected. The Q Report submitted by clubs to NADAC only includes the course time and yardage for qualifying runs. Collecting it for non-qualifiers would require some modifications to trial secretary software platforms

The results catalog in Agility Unscrambled actually has the information for all the runs- Q and NQ with yardage and faults (separately listing course faults and time faults) so the software already has the capability to run a report with all the information.   

[Chris Nelson]

Chris, maybe I'm missing something, but if you only based this on the dogs that Q, then dogs that don't Q because they are over time aren't represented?  That seems to me to be an important piece of the calculation.

It still works out pretty accurately because if the majority of dogs are running towards the bottom of the YPS needed to Q then it brings down the average,  and then we deduct 1 to account for the dogs that were over time.

So if the average ends up being 4.5 and we deduct 1 then the YPS needed is 3.5.

It’s more lenient than for almost every single class and height, and the classes where it isn’t are the ones that needed to tighten up anyway. 


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[Lynne Almeida]

I think they are accounting for the less-speedy dogs by taking the average yps and then adding one yps to arrive at the sct, as Chris said in the video.  I have a tall, moderate-speed dog ... on our cleanest, fastest, most efficient days we can hit just over 5YPS in classes like Tunnelers and Barrelers, for reference.   Now, as an 11-year old veteran (back in her pre-veteran days we often didn't make time in classes like weavers and TnG) she is in the 12" skilled group - I took a look at the 12" times and they seemed quite doable to me.  I'd have to go back and look at her pre-veteran YPS's to be sure (she's slowed down some but not tons), but the new times for the 16" dogs look ok too: for example, I looked at her scores from last weekend, and she would've made time as a 16" dog in all but two classes.

One problem with collecting all times is that without the oversight of an observer to weed out some runs, is that runs where dogs spent an inordinate amount of time sniffing, etc. would be included ... which would really skew the numbers in the other direction.  It will be interesting to see how things are adjusted over time as more data is collected!

[Rosemary]

I looked through the barrelers, regular and jumpers so far and only see one of my dogs on the list.  I do not see Riley who has quite a lot more elite qualifying runs and is noticeably slower than Echo.  Am I missing something?  Why are the runs from two of my dogs not included?

[Team Bailey]

Chris,

So when a 19" dog with Vet Handler runs skilled and 12", which DRI score do you use?  The one for 20" dog, 16" dog or 12"dog on the new charts? 

[Chris Nelson]

We only take the runs that were done at the dogs proficient standard height, or 4” below.

Any runs that happened with two height breaks were excluded as that’s not really fair to the dogs jumping their standard height,  to have their times based on a dog jumping 8” lower then them


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[mstomel]

So for DRI over 100. You based it on the top 10% of Qs over that period of time,  NOT the top 10% of dogs who ran that fast.   

For some classes (i.e. 20" BR ). That includes far less different dogs as some fast dogs ( hi brothers Rev &JP7, and friend Coleby) really took most of those 100+ DRIs. 

Seems like a more accurate representation of the 100+ DRI groups would be to do a top percentage of dogs rather than runs? 

Leanne

I noticed that too. I wonder how much that changed things since it's the same like 3-5 dogs in the top 5% as the top 10% of runs. They might want to be conscience of the verbiage on that since I thought it use to be stated that is was the top x% of Dogs running was calculated for a 100 DRI not top % of Runs.

[Ed and Tres]

Chris, maybe I'm missing something, but if you only based this on the dogs that Q, then dogs that don't Q because they are over time aren't represented?  That seems to me to be an important piece of the calculation.

It still works out pretty accurately because if the majority of dogs are running towards the bottom of the YPS needed to Q then it brings down the average,  and then we deduct 1 to account for the dogs that were over time.

So if the average ends up being 4.5 and we deduct 1 then the YPS needed is 3.5.

It’s more lenient than for almost every single class and height, and the classes where it isn’t are the ones that needed to tighten up anyway. 


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Thanks for this, I was a bit mystified about what that 1 yard thing was.

Now I understand this is how you are lowering the YPS to below average and in future if more dogs Q at lower end the next average could conceivably be lower going forward in some future year. Then that average is minus 1 yard.

[Chris Nelson]

So for DRI over 100. You based it on the top 10% of Qs over that period of time,  NOT the top 10% of dogs who ran that fast.   

For some classes (i.e. 20" BR ). That includes far less different dogs as some fast dogs ( hi brothers Rev &JP7, and friend Coleby) really took most of those 100+ DRIs. 

Seems like a more accurate representation of the 100+ DRI groups would be to do a top percentage of dogs rather than runs? 

Leanne

I noticed that too. I wonder how much that changed things since it's the same like 3-5 dogs in the top 5% as the top 10% of runs. They might want to be conscience of the verbiage on that since I thought it use to be stated that is was the top x% of Dogs running was calculated for a 100 DRI not top % of Runs.

I can’t speak for what was used in the past,  but I do believe it was top % of runs.

We can look into it,   But again,  using these calculations it’s making the numbers way more lenient then they currently are,  I’m a little mystified why folks are having an issue with that.

Changing it to be done by the best YPS of each dog and then the top 10% of all those runs wouldn’t be difficult to calculate,  but at what point do we keep changing the calculations to just keep lowering the criteria that has been the standard for years?   We’re already making things easier for everyone,  but there is a limit to the generosity here.


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[Leanne]

So for DRI over 100. You based it on the top 10% of Qs over that period of time,  NOT the top 10% of dogs who ran that fast.   

For some classes (i.e. 20" BR ). That includes far less different dogs as some fast dogs ( hi brothers Rev &JP7, and friend Coleby) really took most of those 100+ DRIs. 

Seems like a more accurate representation of the 100+ DRI groups would be to do a top percentage of dogs rather than runs? 

Leanne

I noticed that too. I wonder how much that changed things since it's the same like 3-5 dogs in the top 5% as the top 10% of runs. They might want to be conscience of the verbiage on that since I thought it use to be stated that is was the top x% of Dogs running was calculated for a 100 DRI not top % of Runs.

I can’t speak for what was used in the past,  but I do believe it was top % of runs.

We can look into it,   But again,  using these calculations it’s making the numbers way more lenient then they currently are,  I’m a little mystified why folks are having an issue with that.

Changing it to be done by the best YPS of each dog and then the top 10% of all those runs wouldn’t be difficult to calculate,  but at what point do we keep changing the calculations to just keep lowering the criteria that has been the standard for years?   We’re already making things easier for everyone,  but there is a limit to the generosity here.


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Oh I certainly wasn't looking to make the criteria easier to get a 100+ DRI.  But as a teacher who is always looking at data and evaluating it for trends and growth and patterns it just stuck out to me as being very different in that Barrelers class.  Perhaps because Barrelers isn't offered as often as the other classes there was less data of different dogs running to draw from to get a top 10%

As a teacher I wouldn't say the top ten percent of kids who knew their ABCs was 5 kids out of 500 kids kids when those 5 kids knew them every month we tested them that year, especially if they got tested every month and the others were only tested at the end of each semester.  if I wanted a top percentage of kids I'd have to treat each kid as one entity instead of each score as an entity.  I'd take the highest score from each kid and then choose a top percentage fom there to determine  my list of kids to get an "A". I'm not sure if that analogy makes sense to non teacher types.

Certainly if you did that. You'd change the percentage down from top 10% of runs to a lower percentage rate to perhaps top 5% of dogs to get  a real picture of the truly exceptional ones.

Or as another way to look at it....  at champs you take the top 25%(?) of dogs to run in the finals.  You wouldn't list the scores of each run from every dog from highest to lowest , draw a line at the top 25% and then take whatever dogs got those scores into the finals.

But all that becomes moot if DRI was meant to show top percentage of runs vs. top percentage of dogs.   That's totally a NADAC decision.  And I respect any decision made to that effect.

Really not trying to make it easier to get a 100+ DRI.
  I'd trade our few 100+ DRIs for a bit (or really a LOT) more consistency - my youngster is still learning to keep his adrenaline intact.

[Team Bailey]

Hi Chris,

I knew that's how you figured SCT, but I was asking about when we're at a trial and get our YPS which height do we use for Bailey 19" jumping 12?  Will it be 12, 16, 20 to see if she got a DRI over 100?  Sorry for the confusion.